Essays on trans, intersex, cis and other persons and topics from a trans perspective.......All human life is here.

This site is the most comprehensive on the web devoted to trans history and biography. Well over 1400 persons worthy of note, both famous and obscure, are discussed in detail, and many more are mentioned in passing.)

There is a detailedIndexarranged by vocation, doctor, activist group etc.

In addition to this most articles have one or more labels at the bottom. Click one to go to similar persons. There is a full list of labels at the bottom of the page. There is also a search box at the top left. Enjoy exploring!

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This bibliography contains surveys, histories and studies. It does not contain (auto)biographies. Some of the books are mainly gay/lesbian histories, but contain tales of gender variant persons, often available nowhere else.

Bram Stoker. Famous imposters. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, New York:Sturgis & Walton, Company, ix,349pp, 10 illustrations, 1910. A pioneering work by the theatre manager and author of Dracula, but it leaves many questions untackled. No references or bibliography.

Oscar Paul Gilbert (translated from the French by Robert B. Douglas). Men in Women's Guise: Some Historical Instances of Female Impersonation. London:John Lane The Bodley Head Limited. New York: Bretano’s 284 pp 1926. No references or bibliography, uncritical, but a summary of the tales as retold in the early twentieth century.

Oscar Paul Gilbert, (translated from the French by J.Lewis May). Women in Men's Guise. London: John Lane The Bodley Head Limited. 1932. No references, uncritical, but a good summary of the facts as retold in the early part of the century.

C.J.S. Thompson. The Mysteries of Sex: Women Who Posed as Men and Men Who Impersonated Women London: Hutchinson. 1938. New York: Causeway Books 256 pp 8 plates1974. New York : Dorset Press, 1993.. In the style of Stoker, a popular retelling without references or bibliography. The author was the curator of a leading medical museum in England.

Abby Sinclair, George Griffith, Carlson Wade & Latina Seville. I Was Male. Novel Books. 95 pp 1965. A historical survey by Griffith and Wade of eunuchs, castratos and ‘hermaphrodites’, with only a few pages on actual transsexuals.

Antony James. Abnormal World of Transvestites & Sex Changes. New York: L. S. Publications 192 pp1965. Chapters on history, operations, prisons, married tv's, lesbian tv's, tv prostitutes, S&M among tv's and more. James also published America’s Homosexual Underground, in the same year.

John T. Talamini. Boys will be girls : the hidden world of the heterosexual male transvestite. Washington: University Press of America 1982.

Jonathan Katz. Gay/Lesbian Almanac. Harper & Row. 1983. Reproduces many original documents re gays and transpeople in the US 1607-1740 and 1880-1950.

Philip Core. Camp: the Lie that Tells the Truth. London : Plexus. New York: Delilah Books. 212 pp 1984. Features many entries re androgynous people in the arts or otherwise famous.

Kris Kirk and Ed Heath. Men In Frocks. London:Gay Men's Press 1984

Betty W. Steiner (ed). Gender Dysphoria: Development, Research, Management.New York and London: Plenum Press. 1985. the limited point of view of a gender clinic. Regards an MTF finding a husband as ‘unusual’; repeats Stoller’s nonsense about their being only three FTM transvestites. Has read only clinical literature.

Anthony Slide. Great pretenders: a history of female and male impersonation in the performing arts. Lombard, Ill.: Wallace-Homestead Book Co., 160 pp. 1986. Features many male and female impersonators. Some gaps. Bibliography with references to show-biz journals.

Roger Baker, with contributions by Peter Burton and Richard Smith. Drag: a history of female impersonation in the performing arts. London: Cassell, Washington Square, N.Y.: New York University Press,xi,284 pp,1994. A rewrite in tune with later gay acceptance.

Michel Hurst & Robert Swope (eds). Casa Susanna. PowerHouse Books. 156 pp 2005. The editors found a hundred or so photographs at a New York flea market that turn out to be taken at Valenti’s country home in Hunter, N.Y.

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About Zagria

I have a social science degree. I spent several years in the 70s doing Gay Lib counselling, and moved on to organizing trans groups. I was rejected by the Clarke Institute (now CAMH) in the mid 1980s, probably because I do not match either of their stereotypes, but was accepted by Russel Reid on our first meeting in late 1987, and had surgery from James Dalrymple some months later. I have mainly worked as an IT consultant. I have been with the same husband for 45 years.